a collaboration of geeks, stick figure comics, and an alien — for charity?

Two weeks ago, a headline made it up to the front page that gave me an idea: “Ok Reddit, we’ve proven our power with Mister Splashey [sic] Pants and that lady who wanted to go to Alaska. At what point, though, do we take this to a more meaningful level?”Typo aside (I don’t think Mr. Splashy Pants would mind anyway),powerhead brought up a good point, and a lot of you agreed. So the 4 of us here at reddit wanted to do something to help you all make it happen.

First we’d need a non-profit cause for reddit to champion, Splashy-style, but we knew we couldn’t just pick one — you should. Once one was selected, we’d need to give you an incentive to donate. I’ve printed 250reddit alien evolution postcards that we’ll all sign and mail to the first 250 donors we get.

But we knew that wouldn’t motivate anyone, so we called upon a higher power: xkcd. After explaining it to Randall and Davean, they were all for contributing 100 signed xkcd comics, each with unique stick figure(Confession: I got the idea for the postcards from them in the first place). So once we could guarantee the first 100 donors would get signed redditAND xkcd cards, we knew we were on to something (pity those 150 who get stuck with only reddit cards — better comfort yourself with some xkcd shirts).

Hopefully you’ve still got some money left from all those Ron Paul donations, we’re asking for a minimum donation of US $10. Absolutely 100% of your donation will go directly to the non-profit you all have voted for.

Donations will begin on Thursday, the 20th at noon Eastern (GMT-5)(I’ll post the link here on this blog) and we’ll accept them until December 31st, but I’m fairly certain we’ll be well out of cards by then. We’ll also provide a grand total on New Year’s day after the campaign as ended.

Below is a reddit poll to vote on, submit whatever non-profits you feel are worthy. The format should look pretty familiar. Whatever project has the top score by 10pm Eastern (GMT-5) on Wednesday (the 19th) will be the championed cause and the recipient of the fundraising.

Tell your friends; the Internet loves non-profits like DonorsChoose andOLPC, maybe there’s another equally great idea out there that could use the attention, but as always, we’ll leave that up to you all…